US climbers replicating 1963 ascent of Everest

Reuters, Kathmandu

An undated handout image provided on Thursday by Walking with the Wounded in London, England, shows former soldiers Jaco van Gass, left, and Karl Hinnet at the Everest base camp in Nepal. Walking with the Wounded aims to raise more than US$3.17 million with an Everest climb that will start on April 24 to re-train injured members of the British Armed Forces.

Photo: EPA

A flood of US climbers is taking aim at Mount Everest this year as the 50th anniversary of the first US conquest of the famous peak nears, with one team set to try and replicate the historic ascent along a difficult and rarely used route.

Five US mountaineers climbed the 8,850m Everest, the world’s highest peak, in May 1963. Two went along the untested West Ridge route and three along the traditional South East Ridge route, also known as the South Col route.

This year, two climbers in a nine-member team led by Corry Richards will climb the difficult West Ridge route, while the others will go along the Southeast Ridge route, pioneered by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

Conrad Anker, 49, a member of the team and a two-time Everest climber, said that if weather and physical abilities allowed, both groups would try and meet at the summit.

“That will be the plan,” Anker said before leaving for the mountain last month.

Another US team consisting of four climbers led by James Ryrie Norton will also be on the West Ridge route, the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism said.

“These two expeditions are trying to replicate what the US team in 1963 did on Everest,” said Elizabeth Hawley, Kathmandu-based historian and an unofficial authority on Everest.

Hawley, 88, unofficial arbiter of climbing-related disputes and chronicler of Everest climbs, considers the 1963 US ascent to be the biggest Everest milestone after the pioneering feat of Hillary and Norgay because the route is long and so difficult that it is rarely used today.

“They will make a film ready for next year’s 50th anniversary,” the bespectacled Hawley said of the US climbers.

Other US climbers are aiming for records.

Dave Hahn, 50, from Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico, will try to make his 16th ascent along the normal route, Hawley said. The record is 21 climbs by Apa Sherpa, a Nepalese mountaineer.

During the current March-May climbing season, 40-year-old Chad Kellogg, from Seattle, Washington, is trying to become the fastest climber on Everest.

The record is now held by Nepalese Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who climbed the mountain in eight hours, 10 minutes from its base camp, which is located at about 5,300m.

For an average climber, it takes several days to cover the distance after weeks of acclimatization in altitude.

Mount Everest has been climbed more than 5,600 times by nearly 3,700 people since it was first scaled by Hillary and Norgay. The climbers include 321 women, a 13-year-old American boy, a 76-year-old man, a blind person and a man with an artificial limb.